Category: dignity

Posted on

Politics and the UN Security Council: Stand By Your Convictions…

The logo of the United Nations and the German flag to the left and below it.
Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay and Adobe CC, my arrangement

Germany and the UN security council: I am German by birth and upbringing. Political and community responsibility were a central part of education as well as discussions in our family. As indeed in the majority of German families and households.

The security council was from the start and always will be a highly political body. When we look at unjust and forced decisions by its 5 permanent members over the past 80 years since its founding, we will start to realize that anywhere in the world power and third party interests influence such bodies.

We also can easily ascertain that good forces and good deeds are strong and at the moment still prevail throughout Europe, including Germany.

Yet, Germany reserves its right to stand up and point at injustice. These days, with an extreme-right-wing president in the US, a dictator in Russia as heads of government, who are basically best buddies, it’s practically impossible to ‘please all’.

You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
(John Lydgate)

That’s also very clear:
We should not at any time confuse Israeli politics and the reactions to those politics with the past or present of people using antisemitism as a weapon in discussions.

It is tragic and also very true:
In politics and dictatorships all around the world certain methods were – and still are – used to manipulate those of less well-educated mind to gather and hunt those that were a minority, or are an easy target.

‘Minority bashing’ occurs in Russia, in China and the US, in the UK and France. The USA were the first – and so far the only nation – to use a nuclear bomb in a war against another.

They have forfeited their ‘right’ to be counted among the righteous at least in politics: Their present government is nothing to write home about. And that’s putting it rather nicely yet. What would you expect from a president who’s a convicted felon and his administration?

The same holds true for nations such as China or Russia, both also permanent members.

To stand up for our beliefs and the same right for all to justice, peace and support of those rights is a central aspect in German politics and has been for a long time.

I for my part think we can be proud and at the same time unassuming about the great history of science, philosophy and arts this country of Germany possesses.

Posted on

War on Iran, ‘Leverage’, Negotiations – and One of the Oldest Cultures

Collage of two pictures, one ofan old water pump operated by a hand using a lever. The other showing oil wells in front of a dusky skyline.
Images licensed via Adobe CC

‘Leverage’: A nice term almost, when you think of old pumps that would bring water to the surface and into a home. A lever sometimes used to do the ‘pumping’… Exactly that is part of it when you think of getting or having “leverage” in negotiations: One or the other party to an intended deal being able to put pressure on. For their own good.

That’s what this war and the occasional recent (apparent?) ‘flares’ of attacks to break that truce indicate:

Remind each other of the respective position. Let’s remember that it was the US who started this. Internal affairs in Iran haven’t been anything easy to think of – or ‘write home about’; quite to the contrary. But this is not about that government, let’s remember that too.

It’s about oil, Iran having the largest oil recovery industry in the world(!).

About a country, the US of A, whose population looks to the car as something almost like a body appendage: indispensable. Therefore petrol must be cheap. Which in turn means oil has to be cheap too and keep flowing in…

Especially with a president and his ‘coworkers’, his ‘entourage’, or cue-givers…, who refuse to look into a future of being less dependent on fossil fuels, which in the long run could make it better for all: Better water, air and less dependency on ‘any old’ oil well.

Let’s also keep in mind that negotiations take time. Which this president hasn’t got anymore, really: His second term in office is running out. If he wants to leave any kind of legacy beyond the recall of court actions, Epstein papers and worse, he has to make haste.

In the case of Iran that is one thing to better avoid. Haste.
I love that old culture, reaching back thousands of years, into a rich and also troubled history. Full of poetry and wisdom and art.

Three crucial and very striking aspects of many people I had the joy to learn to know better in a comparatively long life are these:

    • perseverance
    • patience
    • pride

That also has its roots in the history of the country: For a couple of thousands of years and to this day being at the heart of a region that always was the turnstile to all cultures you can think of, far east, west and near east.

The free flow of all that’s good in mankind’s history and mind into and through this country, of languages, arts and influences of knowledge and wisdom – together with the resilience built up over troublesome landscapes with hot, forbidding deserts, constant threats by neighbours attacking and earthquakes into the bargain – have created a ‘fellowship’ almost of a people who at their best will neither give in to blackmail or extortion, and will keep their calm, their pride and their preparedness for reasonable offers to the last.

A wise man will look for good counsel. But some people are not wise enough.

Hopefully this shameful war will end sooner rather than later to make room for negotiations – that will need patience and real offerings.

Picture of the tomb of Persian poet Hafez in Shiraz, 2019, courtesy Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons license
Posted on

“By Hook or By Crook”: The Extortion Machinery Called Trump-Administration

German flag in a gold circle, suspended from an air born heart shape by a fine chain.

(Image by Alexey Hulsov from Pixabay)

Germany’s situation is bad? Beg your pardon? We are getting along fine, taken all in all, thank you. Who started a war to divert attention from his legal problems? To finally be able to make Iran succumb to their terms because they need oil so urgently? After 2018, cancelling those uranium enrichment control contracts, without reason. (Link to New York Times report from 2018.)

Who pressured the whole of NATO into spending more on their annual on weapons in order to get the weapon’s industry in the US to calm down? 5% instead of 3%, all of NATO who didn’t already?
Since, most of NATO members buy there.

Whose economy has slumped for years? Where are thousands of people killed in the streets because that same weapons industry clings to that myth of the society needing its civilians be ‘under arms’, because the right to protect ‘house and home’ is ohhh, so important?

Who initiated the storming of Capitol Hill in 2021?

Whose universities are being threatened or actually cut off from fundings in order to get scientists to acknowledge one’s own world view?

WHO IS IT, BONDING WITH PUTIN IN RUSSIA FOR PRACTICALLY A DECADE NOW?

TO WHAT END?

To have more leverage, of course. To threaten people and scare them in their boots in order to get the ‘deals made’. Someone with no consideration for anyone but himself and the likes of him:

A bunch of self-centred, cruel and completely ruthless, wealthy, shameless crooks, in his own case already ruled guilty in front of a US court on 34 counts of bribery, corruption and molestation. Practically fleeing the shameful and horrifying truth of those Epstein papers.

SHAME ON YOU! 

Author’s Note: This blog is not strictly kept along the lines and rules similar genres of text, such as commentaries in newspapers, are like. ‘Blog’ derives from ‘weblog’ originally, which in turn is based on the combination of the two words ‘web’ and ‘log’. The log being a book that recorded daily events on ships and was – and still is, as far as I know – mandatory to maintain.

‘Blogs’ therefore represent a category of entries or texts that usually are crisp, rather short and focus on the main subject primarily, often made to look like actual diaries and openly discussed thoughts.

In literature, one well-known genre is the fictitious ‘novel of letters’: A longer text or book made up of letters all written by the same person but creating the impression that several protagonists were involved at a time and wrote letters to each other, a careful ordering by fictitious dates included.
One of many famous examples in English literature is “The Woman in White” by Wilkie Collins, a high-towering author among many of that also rich English literary culture.

(Recommended too: This kind of novel saw a hype that showed already in the course of the 18th century. Try Henry Fielding’s satire “Shamela” for real good fun…another one of the greats.)

I write my posts sometimes, when angry and I also like to imagine that the person addressed might ‘click by’ one day. Even if they don’t, which in some cases could be highly unlikely, in theory, I use this platform to show all who care that such voices, who think and say similar words, are there. And the numbers of visitors seem to prove me right, to some extent.

Thanks to all who come by here and who care!

Posted on

“Smile and the World Will Smile With You” – or: The Smile of Asia

Four pictures of smiling people
Image by Sasin Tipchai, Yogendra Singh, Hữu Thanh Cái and Tri Le from Pixabay, my arrangement

The smile of Asia as a phrase has been used in advertising – too. But the actual fact is also that in many countries around the world, especially in the Near or Far East, as they are called, smiling at others you never even met before is a custom.

People from other parts of the world often feel charmed and after a while even puzzled by these smiles. Aren’t we friends, when we smile? Or at least close?

There’s another fine line that Rudyard Kipling, English ‘poet laureate’ and award-winning writer, used in his book “Kim”:

“The indifference of native crowds he was used to.
But this strong loneliness among white men preyed on him.”

If you have once encountered and actually felt that atmosphere and met people from those parts, you will come to realize that he was right. It feels exactly that way. That sense of community and friendliness, acceptance of others as human beings can be heart-warming.

I am not originally from anywhere close to those parts. But I have lived with and learned from the Persian culture for the better part of my comparatively long live.

I have come to appreciate that feeling. It is based on the idea, that we of course would need to really meet, get to know the other person in order to be friends. But that as human beings we can be close, because we are similar in our needs and wishes and sorrows and joys; we need each other, in troubled times as well as in joyful times.

According to that nice saying too:
“Sorrow shared is sorrow halfed. Joy shared is doubled joy.”

It can help also to (again) understand that in spite of the advantages the individualism in Western countries has brought, it can make people lonely. The pandemic has increased and sharpened that.

Perhaps the ideas we see daily actually ‘thrown’ at us all around the clock (if we don’t filter them), online that is, about being ever more optimized, the ‘perfect person’, make it more difficult.

The daily live in Asia has developed over thousands of years, climate and living conditions as well as ancient philosophy and customs are part of it. We can learn that:

Smile – and the world will smile with you.

Posted on

All the Same…? – or: Views and Perspectives – or: Thinking Outside the Box

Majorities seem to be the thing… they are many, they are often loud (not always) and they seem to be everywhere… Really? With a little closer look, taking a different view – taking a step back and looking from the outside we may see more.

A crucial matter is that ‘thing’ humans have: They need to be part of something, of a group, a club, a family, a tribe; people, in short, they fit in with. At least to some extent.

But, since the dawn of time we were not all the same: Some people are gardeners, you might say, some are philosophers, some are mathematicians. Some are … you name it.

Another thing can be that at times people tend to feel irritated or self-conscious or intimidated when faced with new ideas and strange people.

So, belonging is a central aspect. It can become complex and sometimes even painful, when there seems a larger group of gardeners and a small group of philosophers, to stay with the examples. Both sides may feel challenged: One side because philosophers seem ‘strange’. The other because they ‘fit’ differently, elsewhere.

When we know about these facts – the idea that we cannot be all the same, that changing perspectives and recalling what is important in life, is crucial too, we may become able (again) to accept the new or strange idea.

Because we feel grounded in our own world view and still are able to integrate something else, something different. New.

That’s where joy can be found: Combine the old and the new into something fruitful and inspiring.

Posted on

War – Power – Power-play – Power-balance or: No Time for Denying the Obvious

Image of a cloud in the sky at dusk, with sunlight behind it.
Image by lmaresz from Pixabay

War is no destiny. War is not dealt us by any type of gods to check our resilience or our heroism.
War is man-made by those that crave power, want to protect it or even more so,  protect the money involved.

Conflicts are a natural part of human life. Wars are not.

The present power blocks we see are not really new. New is the leader-of-state-type the US have engaged to do their dirty work:
Someone who likes it, who already is starting to prepare his ultimate leadership as dictator, king or emperor and someone also, who uses threats and fear as means to ‘make deals’. He has publicly admitted, nay, praised himself that: A ‘deal-maker’.

At present the most urgent need many see and have is ensuring peace.

To deny the obvious, namely that the maps we can see make Ukraine an encroachment onto Russian territory, if they should join the NATO, is childish.

Image of NATO member states and installations around East of Europe, including Ukraine and its border with Russia.
Image screenshot of NATO’s own website, all options checked. Taken at: 23-11-2025_05-50-47 local time (UTC+1)

Ukraine is a country with people, a history and pride.
But they also are people who want to live, to have peace, to stop seeing their cities and villages go up in flames. Bury their dead and weep each and every day over their lost loved ones.

Even more so, Palestine and the Palestinians, same way the majority of Israeli people do!

The majority of Israelis publicly declares even on Social Media such as LinkedIn their lack of support for the politics Netanyahu has applied from the start:

He was known as so-called hardliner from day one.
He had made the situation for Palestinians impossible for them by forcefully moving Israeli settlers there. Gaza-strip and the West Bank had been assigned to Palestinians to live in peace. To this day the official acknowledgement of Palestine as a state is not complete.

Additionally, it is recorded fact that his support in parliament and from voters was waning. So he started a war.

Attacking again under any pretext? Shame on him.

Peace needs to be negotiated, when we want to stop wars. Sometimes that can take time. But to deny the obvious or to refuse to negotiate properly is a sign of ulterior motives.

War needs to stop.

This is the simple truth:
Whatever your colour, creed or conviction, you are not supposed to either kill, torture or bother other people. Period.

Posted on

War and Peace: Patriarchy in Full Swing – When the Image of ‘The Man’ and Apparent History Get in the Way of Reason

‘A real man’, ‘a hulk’, ‘the hero’, ‘the fighter’ – the words and phrases are numerous, sometimes there seems no end to the ideas of what men should be like.

“Always cool, calm and collected.” “Women and children, the sick and the elderly to be saved first.”

What does that do to men’s minds? To some, at least, raised with the full brunt of this concept?

That a man is to be powerful, reigns the creation, the earth, and everything in it – including women.

‘His woman’. ‘His wife’.

For centuries that was understood: A woman is her father’s and later her husband’s ‘ward’, in modern terms that was in effect the legal ruling. She did not own anything, even when she worked or inherited money.

Comfort. A fine word. It evokes all kinds of images if we come to think of it. And men so long had to be the providers. Providers of food, shelter and – comfort.

Because, this indeed can be too much: Because, indeed, this is not human!

Every human being feels lonely at times, yearns for closeness, warmth and comfort.

But men are supposed to feel and be always superhuman? Strong, knowledgeable? The last resort?

It’s not possible to always feel that way. But when no one tells them so – how would they know?

And sick minds can be born by the almost schizophrenic concept: Be kind, understanding and calm. But also be brutal and a fighter and always in control of the situation.

Schizophrenia is associated with sickness. But at the outset it means a ‘divided brain’. Thinking and feeling are at odds. And if that cannot be resolved, we find cruelty and (near) madness in deeds and – online activities…

Let’s remember that war is just a phenomenon based on this image. Based on the idea of sovereignty and wealth being the most important and most attractive traits in a man.

These are images, concepts and they are not human. We do not need images. We need human beings in this world.

War is no solution. War is not destiny. War is not inevitable. War is not in our nature.

Conflicts are. But they can be solved if we really want to.

Posted on

“One Swallow Does Not Make a Summer” – Or: How To Judge – or Not…?

A table in a laboratory sowing several tubes, small glass bottles and testing equipment for chemical substances.
Image free via freepik.com (no AI involved)

In science you make a rule from thousands of occurrences of the same phenomenon… if it is the same. There are strict rules for creating new or even corrected rules in science. The same is true for the law, legislation and courts of law: In order to be sure of what you do or say, you have to be very careful of your facts, and your witnesses, if any.

That’s why in everyday life you meet so many people who judge often based on – almost nothing: One day, one situation, one occurrence, even a chance correlation of two events – and ‘lo and behold’ they make up a story about people, a place – or they pass judgement.

It’s easy that way: Passing judgement, on others. It makes you feel fine(r) about yourself. And you can stop worrying about your own shortcomings…

Well, it depends, of course. Because not everybody is the same.

Even the bible, a book full of wisdom, if you know how to read it, has that, already, Matthew, 7, 3:

“3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?” (King James Version)

“3 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (New International Version)

There’s the idea that two events occurring at the same time can be made into a story… such as a stork flying across the sky while a baby is born… Makes it – what?

“Storks bring babies…?”

Are you quite sure…?

Drawing of a smiling stork flying past carrying a baby inside a folded cloth in his beak.
Image free via Ecosia filtered search, Creative commons
Posted on

Peeping Toms – and Marys? – ‘Devices and Desires’…

Two pictures, an eye peeping from behind a hole in a wallpaper and the photo of a nightclub sign advertising a peep show
Images by Kev and Tumisu from Pixabay, my graphics

The ‘peeping Tom’ for generations has described aptly what I am about to deal with here: The secretly watching male, who’s too dumb for a vivid imagination and too cheap for spending money on the ‘real thing’:
The male (and female?) person who watches others using any kind of device, in the analogue days telescopes or binoculars, to catch at least glimpses of those others in ‘private states’:
Any stage of undress, close encounters of the private and loving kind they miss out on themselves so sadly…

Perhaps it is no coincidence that ‘a Tom’ is also short for a roving male cat…

It is sometimes sad, sometimes rather annoying, when you realize them being about – and often just plain ridiculous and proof of very small minds.

They are not using the – especially these days – ample means and opportunities that often are even sold cheap online; not using the human imagination based perhaps on tales or books or even movies to make their own ‘reality’…

Woody Allen let one of his characters put it nicely in his comedy “Bullets over Broadway”: ‘reality is for those who cannot make their own.’

These days I presume, with so-called – in this respect – equality of the sexes around – women might be ‘peeping’ too; but that is a guess.

Just as in former centuries (married) men used to boast about their ‘adventures’, the nice term ‘swaggering’ makes it even clearer; while women were the ‘true gentlemen’, who relished in silence, even though from necessity rather than want…

To this day, the statistics in these matters especially are hard to determine and not easily published. Not all that is loudest is the most of any kind – nor right….

The right to privacy is a human right and apart from an invasion into the privacy of those that are watched, it’s a punishable offence…

Still, to put not too fine a point to it… all those who read this and start thinking: Perhaps new ways can be found, anyway:
There are those that seem to be the natural counterpart of peeping Toms or Marys: the exhibitionists…

So, inhibited masses, unite!

Posted on

Never Assume or: Appearances Can Be (Very) Deceptive or: The Art of (Not) Judging Your Peers

Image of a blue natural crystal stone, grown into a multi-faceted shape.
Image by Alana Jordan from Pixabay

Knowing your fellow man – or woman. In theory it is easy: Just talk to them – or look at them and you know. Right?

Wrong.

We only understand and really recognize what we have seen before. Of course, there are universal truths. Yet, there are also differences in detail.

They depend on experience. On discretion someone may have learned in the course of a lifetime…

I for one for example have learnt to be very careful with what – or whom – I talk about. Usually, that is.

So easily people actually jump to conclusions.
In those conclusions there are just as much ‘wish(es) father to the thought’ as the quote from Shakespeare goes; as well as ideas based on often culturally or individually dependent views and perspectives involved.

So, a wolf would expect a wolf to behave like one. Yet, when there’s a sheep inside – or a fox maybe, or a hare, or a squirrel, or a bear… or a bit of all of them:
What is the conclusion then?

When we want to know about people the first order is: Patience!

Although many of us conclude about basics of another human being inside of seconds, we still should keep an open mind:

So often, appearances can be deceptive.

Privacy Proudly powered by WordPress